Introducing John Ramsay Puckett ("Jack")

We're happy to announce the arrival of John Ramsay Puckett ("Jack") at 5:03pm on Thu Nov 19, 2009. He came into the world at 21.5 inches and 9 lbs 14 oz, after 49 hours of continuous labor. We are so thankful that he's healthy and that we all got to go home on Saturday. A few pictures have been posted at
http://public.fotki.com/rlr244/john-ramsay-puckett/ and more will be posted there in the weeks and months to come.

Happy 4th Anniversary!

On this cold Alaskan day (high 23, daylight hours < 8), I thought we could use some Caribbean vibes from our honeymoon.

Happy 4th Anniversary to us!

Happy Birthday Mommy!

Hang in there, you'll get your precious gift soon!

Potato Harvest

Maia's preschool class visited a classmate's garden and harvested potatoes. Maia is still talking about it!

Go Cubs Go!

We sang this after a Cubs win the other day, and then Maia wanted to do it on-camera. She did it all by herself! But when when I asked for Take Me Out To The Ballgame, she got a little flustered...

Introducing: Tiny Puckett!

We had our 20-week ultrasound last week and we're happy to report: It's a healthy little boy! The sonographer explained everything we were seeing in great detail, partially because she was training a med student on the system. She gave us 90+ pictures on a disc, so we've only posted the top third on our Fotki site. The best of these are below. Enjoy!


Note the "Puckett forehead."


Arms & legs!


Hands & feet!


Strong 4-chambered heart, good heartrate.


Brain with strong separation between hemispheres.


Measurements to check growth progress. Tiny was 20w 1d as of these pics, with a due date of Nov 10th. He's measuring 5-12 days ahead... in fact, the sonographer measured the femur 3 times because she thought it was too long! But the uncertainties are 10-14 days, so he's really not ahead at all. (430 g = 1 lb, give or take 4 oz.)


Hang in there, Tiny!

Happy Birthday Shannon!

Happy birthday to the oddest of uncles and our favorite cardinal killer, Uncle Shannon. We hope you had a great day! We can't wait to see you!

Happy Birthday to the Godfather

Happy birthday to Maia's Godfather, John. We hope you have a great day! See you soon!

20 adorable things about my daughter

With Andy being out of town for 8 days, Maia and I have had lots of time together. Makes me realize how truly adorable she is. I've made a list:

1. She freaks out at the sight of a school bus. She loves them and always wants to know where they are going.
2. When she wants to be picked up or held, she says "I want to hold you momma."
3. She still thinks anything bigger than a dog is a moose
4. Her ears get bright, bright red when she sleeps.
5. When she doesn't know the answer to something, she shrugs her shoulders and says "aye dunno."
6. She thinks anything brown is poop (ok, a little gross, but funny).
7. When she talks about Daddy being gone, I say he's at the telescope. Every time, she responds "the big telescope? not tiny?"
8. She can sort of sing the ABC song, but sings it phonetically
9. She likes to pretend that there are spider or bears under our dining room table.
10. She likes to pretend that she is a ghost, but doesn't understand what a ghost is.
11. Sometimes, when I ask her what she did that day, she says "nuthin."
12. Every time we go to the play center at the gym, she gets a big grin on her face and does a belly flop into the ball pit.
13. Her hair sticks straight up when she rolls on our couch.
14. She calls cottage cheese "apple cheese."
15. Anything that she doesn't want to eat is "too spicy."
16. She talks in her sleep
17. She gets so much joy from pushing elevator buttons
18. She eats crayons (more annoying than adorable, but pretty funny)
19. She is not afraid of anything
20. She says I love you, but it comes out "aye wuv woo"

Gallivanting Gingerbread Gal Visits AK

A gingerbread lady came to stay with us last month. She asked us to show her something she could only see in Alaska. So on March 7th, we decided to take her to a dog-sled race called the Iditarod. Teams of special dogs pull their owners over a thousand miles across the snow. These dogs could get from St Louis to New York City in only 10 days!

Maia welcomes our new friend to the wintery north.


Here come the doggies!


The dogs only sweat through their feet, so they wear booties to keep them warm.


This is Rick Swenson, the only person to win the race 5 times.
He didn't win this year, though.


"Thanks for watching the doggies with me!"


P.S. - Thankfully, most of the snow is gone now. Only the big piles and the shady spots have any left. And the sun is up until 9:30 at night!

Happy Anniversary Gramma and Grampa

Happy 35th anniversary to Dan and Bobbie. Even though they celebrated a bit early with a spring break trip to Florida, we hope you saved a bit of celebration for Monday. Soon we will be together, and we can celebrate with a nice dinner out!

Announcing Tiny!

Expected Due date: 11/10/09

We are proud to announce a new addition to the family. We had our first ultrasound on Monday. At the end they gave us this grainy picture that Maia carried around the rest of the day. She has named the baby Tiny. Maia was almost 9 pounds, so lets hope she's right!

For you technical types, ignore the CRL measurement on the picture, a bit of a technical hiccup. The baby had a strong heartbeat, measured exactly in line with the dates, and even moved a bit for us. The midwife said she expected to see more defined arms and legs, but Tiny was probably just turned away, giving us a great shot of its shrinking tail.

Please keep us in you prayers as we hope for a healthy and uneventful 7 more months!

Happy Birthday Gran!

Make a Smilebox greeting

More Disney-Maia meets the mouse and others

Disney Part Three-Princess Breakfast

A highlight of the trip was breakfast with the princesses. We had been telling Maia all week that we would be doing this, but I don't think she really understood what was going on. The breakfast was at Ariel's grotto in California Adventure. When we arrived, we were first greeted by Ariel, the Little Mermaid (with legs and dressed in a princess dress). Maia was speechless when meeting her favorite princess. Ariel was great and kept talking to her trying to make her comfortable. They took an official picture and let us take pictures with our camera. We later declined the $30 picture, it wasn't much better than the picture below.

We were seated and then served a family style breakfast. A royal page stopped by our table and talked with us for a bit, then the first princess was announced. One by one the princesses were announced and came around to the table to talk. There was a few minutes of chit-chat, and then an opportunity for pictures. Maia was out of her mind! We had a great time watching her meet all the princesses, the food was pretty good, and the overall mood was very relaxing. Enjoy the pictures of Maia and the princesses!

Disneyland Part Two

We stayed at Paradise Pier Hotel, which is one of three hotels on the Disneyland property.  The hotel was great, the room was nice a big and had some true Disney touches.  When we checked in, they asked us if we were celebrating anything and I mentioned Maia's birthday.  They gave her a big birthday button and when we got back to the room the first night, there were mickey shaped rice krispy treats and a small birthday cake made out of towels waiting for her.  Every night when they turned down the beds, they left gold coins with different Disney characters on them.  

The hotel was about a 10 minute walk to Disneyland and the main entrance of California Adventure.  For California Adventure, there is a second entrance just for hotel guests which was about a 5 minute walk.  It was a nice perk.  The biggest perk by far, and the reason that we ultimately decided to stay at a Disney hotel, was that hotel guests received early entry into Disneyland every day that it was offered.  On Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, fantasyland and parts of tomorrow land open an hour early for certain folks.  We were up early and first into the park on those days, which gave us the opportunity to ride some of the slowest loading rides without any lines!

Disneyland- Part One

We were lucky enough to spend some time in Southern California accompanying Andy on a business trip. We decided to tack on some time at Disneyland to the end of the trip. The vacation package we ended up with included 6 day passes, so Maia and I headed over there one day while Andy was still at his conference. Our friend Meerenai came down from the Bay area and hung out with us one day too. These pictures are from those first two days at the happiest place on Earth!

Maia set to ride her first ride-Dumbo!

Trying on her ears

By the second day, she was a Dumbo pro

Meerenai and Maia having fun

Maia on King Arthur's Carousel